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Show -71- Chapter Six The first days that the Professor spent without his afternoon and evening drinks seemed empty and dull. He lid not suffer the kind of tithdrawal pains he had imagined; actual pain in the stomach or headaches, and the emptiness was not so much inside him as it was exterior. His hand kept reaching for something tfeefccaaafteen accustomed to finding. He tried substituting ice-water or weak lemonade, which kept his hands occupied, but then the dullness set in, particularly near the end of the first month, when he attended the cocktail parties -that traditionally marked the opening of the school year. He attempted not to make a show of his abstinence. He eatfcisad about a glass filled with water and ice and sipped it much as he might earlier have done with a gin and tonic? He recalled a theory of his wife's, that everyone drinking at a party seemed silly to those who did not drink, but he could find little truth in it. His friends looked the same and they acted as he had remembered, but their drinks gave them a reserve of energy that he could no longer muster. He ran down about midway through each party, then began looking for excuses to get away? His not drinking pleased his; wife, so she did her best to cooperate? Occasionally, though, she complained that his changed habit was difficult to become accustomed to, especially when before he had insisted upon staying to the end of |
